Cheltenham Tips: Rory Delargy's 9/1 Hunters Chase NRMB Bet

Rory Delargy’s Hunters Chase Pick

Premier Magic

In the seventh of this year’s Paddy Power Media’s ‘From The Horse’s Mouth’ podcast ‘Cheltenham Countdown’, host Tom Nugent together with former jockey turned pundit Ruby Walsh and well-known journalist and broadcaster Rory Delargy, look at the Hunters Chase on day four of the 2024 Cheltenham Festival.

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Rory Delargy

Premier Magic had decent form coming into the race last season and a few of the point-to-point and hunter chase experts thought he was massively overpriced and that proved to be the case. He’s trained by someone in Bradley Gibbs who has a very good record in P2P and Hunter Chases and because he doesn’t have that many runners under rules people aren’t really aware.

That’s part of the reason why you do get these shocks and you don’t often get horses who aren’t good enough, you just get horses that are very well suited by the nature of the race, who don’t get races run to suit them through the season. It’s not easy to equate the form coming into it unless you’re paying particular attention to it.

You want to pay attention to who wants to book the best jockeys and you need to be aware of who the best jockeys are, but the days where you can rule out half of the horses because the days of mister double-barrelled claiming seven is riding is largely gone.

Premier Magic’s the horse to beat in the race. He was 66/1 when he won it last year and the general consensus was it must have been a bit of a fluke, but you look into his form before that and you see he had a better chance than the market suggested and he’s unbeaten since.

He went on to win at Cheltenham at least as impressively as he won at the Festival over the same course and distance and he’s won two P2Ps with his head in his chest. I see absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t be very close to the head of the market.